i understand the fears associated with robotic warfare, but it makes more sense to be anti-war than to be anti-drone. the drone program is a huge asset just as it has made huge mistakes. it has significantly degrade the capabilities of al qaeda but if we are intentionally killing people running to victims of strikes or attending their funerals, then those are war crimes. but i sense some in this nation are getting a little soft and forgetful when they defend the civil liberties of al qaeda members who are working to kill us. torture is obviously a separate issue. once captured you no longer pose a threat, but people hiding in ungovernable tribal areas who still pose a threat must be dealt with. i understand the fears of progressives as obama conducts a foreign policy that looks like bush's. i am not pro-drone. i am pro-destroying al qaeda. i am pro-protecting america. i am pro-a better drone program

and i am pro ending this war as soon as we can but i fear that's a long way away. as douglas macarthur said, only the dead have seen the end of war, and we may now be in a permanent war. okay. that does it for "the cycle." martin, it's yours. >> passionate patriotism from toure. thank you. it's monday, february 11th, and a pope has abdicated, the president prepares to face the nation, but republicans are still stuck on benghazi. >> the president's state of the union address. could be the president's last best chance to address a captive audience. >> do republicans have the leverage now? >> none of the things i ran on as part of the tea party have been fixed. >> i don't want to live with this sequester. >> how do we get growth with jobs? >> no confirmation without information. >> are you going to support him for defense secretary? >> i will see the rest of the answers to his questions but

certainly i have very grave concerned. >> i don't think we should let brennan go forward for the cia directorship and hagel to be confirmed until the white house gives us an accounting. >> is it fair to say you are leaning against voting for him. >> that would be fair. >> maybe that's why we haven't heard the full story about benghazi. >> allow myself to introduce myself. >> keep in mind, a lot of the sources are spies and for the most part spies don't like their names used. >> my name is richie cunningham. ♪ how you like me now ♪ how you like me now ♪ remember the time >> good afternoon, and we start in washington where we can observe two very different ways in which we might honor those who serve with this country's armed forces. first, the president led a medal of honor ceremony for staff

sergeant clinton remache whose actions during an attack helped save the lives of dozens of his comrades. and then there is the concerted effort by republicans to deny another distinguished veteran from serving his country as secretary of defense. a senate committee scheduled to vote on the nomination of chuck hagel tomorrow. senator john mccain says, i will not participate in any walkout of tomorrow's committee vote, which i guess is what counts for statesmanship among republicans these days, but as to whether mr. mccain will support his one-time friend, well, that remains a bit of a mystery. >> we've still got some more information. >> are you going to support him for defense secretary? >> i will see the rest of the answers to his questions, but certainly i have very grave concerns. i think we need some more information. >> of course, senator lindsey graham brings up an excellent point, one i'm sure more republicans will soon be asking,

why stop at chuck hagel? >> i don't think we should allow brennan to go forward for the cia directorship, hagel to be confirmed as secretary of defense until the white house gives us an accounting. yes, i'm going to ask my colleagues just like they did with john bolten, joe biden said no confirmation without information. no confirmation without information. >> right. i mean, no one at the white house is answering any of these important questions about benghazi. i mean, apart from hillary clinton, leon panetta, chuck hagel, john brennan, and the president, of course. in fact, republicans would be wise to heed the words of the president as he spoke to the sergeant. >> there are many lessons, one of them is that our troops should never, ever be put in a position where they have to defend the indefensiblndefensib. >> let's get to our panel.

julian epstein is a democratic strategist and ryan grim is the d.c. grbureau chief for "the huffington post." national review is reporting the ranking member on the armed services committee will put a hold on the nomination but our mike viqueira is reporting we could have a full floor vote on hagel's nomination wednesday or thursday. what do you think the outcome will be? >> i think the handwriting is on the wall here. this issue is gone. i think most of washington has looked at this and said, there's nothing to stop hagel. his confirmation is all but assured -- >> you just heard lindsey graham say no confirmation without information. >> but there's not enough republicans who agree to a filibuster so the republicans cannot use the cloture procedure. you begin to fell that this is a party that time is just starting to pass by. i stant remember the last time the republican party took a high profile political issue and won

the public debate on that. this is just kind of head scratching in its political stupidity. the argument here is that they want more information on benghazi. as you pointed out not only has secretary clinton testified, leon panetta -- >> but it has nothing to do with benghazi. >> they want to punish a guy who wasn't even in government when benghazi occurred. you combine that with the lack of civility and you feel like this is a republican party that's like the bad news bears. they cannot pick an issue and prosecute it. at the end of the day they will lose it. it is all for nothing because they don't have the votes to block it. no cabinet level appointee has ever been filibustered. the republicans have at least i think enough of them agreed not to do that. so you wonder what all this ridiculous theater is about. it's certainly not helping the republican brand. >> and, julian, sorry, ryan, to

julian's point let me show you these poll numbers. quinnipiac says the president is more trusted on gun policy, immigration, the environment, everything basically, but his lead on foreign policy is a staggering 14 points. what makes republicans think this is a good thing to have a fight over? >> right. up until recently everybody said, look, politics stops at the water's edge, and that hasn't been the case for the last couple years with this republican party. but it turns out that it wasn't necessarily that both parties followed that axiom because they were being nice about it. it turns out that it's incredibly bad politics to challenge your sitting president overseas. and, you know, this benghazi thing has not worked out for the republican party at all. they tried effectively to make it the biggest issue of the presidential campaign in the last several weeks, and people just didn't buy into it. what they saw is a tragedy.

something that was -- if it could have been prevented, it should have been prevented, but they weren't going to start pointing blame and ask for the resignations of hillary clinton and throw barack obama out of office. >> right. >> and the idea that you'd be able to stop future cia heads and secretaries of defense because of something that's already been well gone over, i agree with julian, the politics of it just don't make sense to me. >> julian, let me quote you dick cheney from a speech he gave to wyoming republicans over the weekend. i'm quoting the great mab. the performance of barack obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal. let me read that again. the performance of barack obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal. julian, i'm only surprised he didn't go on to dismiss the president's shooting skills. what's your response there to mr. cheney? >> that's right. when it comes to making comments

on choosing staff, dick cheney is the national gargoyle. he was the only guy in charge of a vp selection process who ended up choosing himself. the hypocrisy is mind blowing. here is a guy going after two decorated war veterans who himself had five determents, who was quoted as saying he had better things to do. a guy who lied us in war in iraq. he mismanaged the effort in afghanistan by ignoring it a great deal of the time. a guy on whose watch 9/11 occurred. i mean, here is a guy who failed to get osama bin laden in bora bora. here is a guy who had so many failures on his watch in foreign policy going after two decorated war veterans and an administration record that's been extraordinarily successful not just in iraq, afghanistan, in going after al qaeda and getting osama bin laden. i mean, it is just mind-blowing how hypocritical and out of touch that's guys are and

listening to dick cheney give you advice on foreign policy, i mean, that is a new -- that is just a new low. >> i fear it is. ryan, listen to jay carney taking questions about chuck hagel and benghazi. here he is. >> what is unfortunate here is the continuing attempt to politicize an issue, in this case through nominees that themselves had nothing to do with benghazi, and to do so in a way that only does harm to our national security interests. >> so, ryan, just remind me again of what benghazi has to do with chuck hagel's nomination. >> well, nothing. and -- >> sorry, could you repeat that? >> it's -- >> sorry, repeat that, ryan. what does it have -- what does benghazi have to do with chuck hague snel. >> absolutely nothing. it's kind of like why would you take foreign policy advice from dick cheney. after the crash of '29, herbert hoover kept coming to republican conventions and giving these big

speeches every four years, and every time he did it, democrats just celebrated because it reminded the entire country of how they got to where they are. so i would assume that democrats would actually encourage dick cheney, keep coming on television, keep giving the american people advice, keep suggesting what's wrong with president obama because you can guess which side people will wind up on. >> ryan grim and julian epstein, thank you so much for joining us. next, the state of the u.s. economy and why some in washington just can't say yes to this particular president. stay with us. >> someone should give senator graham a snickers bar and tell him to go sit in the corner until he's happy about something. >> right. >> it's disturbing. >> i mean, unless he's got sugar problems and he's low, his sugar is low, i don't think a snickers bar is going to help him. ♪ oh, sugar, honey honey ♪ you are my candy girl to grow, we have to boost our social media visibility.

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so what will the president say when he stands up before america's top lawmakers tomorrow night and delivers his state of the union address? well, thanks to pollsters we do have some idea of what the public wants him to focus on and once again it's the economy, which people cite as their top concern, well ahead of other leading issues such as the deficit, guns, or health care. the white house has certainly gotten the message on jobs and isn't waiting until tomorrow night to start getting its message out before the inevitable republican attacks start raining down. take a listen. >> you will hear in the president's state of the union an outline from him for his plan to create jobs and grow the middle class. the middle class is the engine that drives this country forward and which will, if it is given the right tools and the right

opportunities, will drive us forward in the 21st century. >> let's get to our guest, democratic strategist bob shrum, and karen finney. the president is expected to use the speech as a way to frame the debate over the so-called sequester which would mean $85 billion in cuts that republicans claim are entirely his fault. take a listen to this. >> you know, the president, he's the one who proposed the sequester in the first place. >> it's what president obama proposed in 2011. >> it is inevitable quite frankly. now these cuts are coming by law and it's law the president signed and advocated. >> okay, professor shrum, on march 1st, the sequester cuts take effect. now republicans say they can't be stopped and they're all the president's fault. is that right? >> no, it's completely wrong. to make that argument requires a sequestration of memory and i mean recent memory. john boehner, when sequester

passed, said he got 98% of what he wanted. >> that's exactly what he said. >> the majority of republicans voted for it. they used it as a way to hold the debt ceiling to ransom. the only leverage they have is leverage to lower their poll ratings and lower the boom on the american economy. the cbo says if you do this, you won't get unemployment under 7.5% before 2015. you could actually push this economy back into another recession and republicans who use this strategy from 2009 on wrecked the economy to try to wreck obama, weren't able to sell that to the american people in 2012. they can't sell it to the american people now. and you can't rebrand yourself as a party if you're wearing the scarlet letter of deception and economic destruction. >> that's absolutely true. karen, republicans seem to think that they've got the president in a real bind over this sequester. take a listen to this. >> that's not fair. >> democrats are exactly where the republicans were six weeks ago. look, taxes were going up by

law. the only question was were you going to negotiate a good package, save as many of the bush tax cuts as you could? >> karen, they're now saying republicans have as much leverage now as the democrats did during the fiscal cliff. is that your calculation? >> you know, i think these guys are back to that whole war on caterpillars thing. what are they talking about? selective memory. again, they participated in this process, and think about the messages that the americans are hearing right now. you're hearing republicans say, well, gee, we had nothing to do with it despite the fact this they all voted for it as keith ellison so eloquently pointed out yesterday in that same clip. but then you have the president saying let's try to find an interim step so this doesn't happen because i'm concerned about what the implications of sequester will be. i don't think the american people are going to fall for it. they're hearing the president sound the alarm and say i have put a deal on the table, here is how much we've already done, i want a balanced approach. all of what the american people have also said they want.

and all you are hearing from republicans is again more of this same, well, gee, i guess there's nothing we can do. it's just going to happen. i don't think that's going to fly. >> okay. bob, we just learned that representative steve stockman, who suggests the president should be impeached for proposing gun safety legislation, is bringing the great ted nugent as his guest tomorrow night. now, i guess that's some improvement on mr. stockman carrying 30 milligrams of valium in his underpants, but isn't mr. nugent likely to explode with rage at the mere mention of gun safety? >> sure. look, this is a party that does need to remake itself, but it can't, and the problem that they have is that they have so many guys like stockman in the house republican caucus who don't want to recognize the reality of 2012, don't want to recognize the realities of the 21st century. i think it hurts the republican party to have someone like him there tomorrow night. i think it's a big mistake. but john boehner can't control that. just as he can't control his own caucus. look, i give boehner the benefit

of the doubt at one level. i think he knows sequestration is very bad. i think he also knows that he can't sell to his caucus any kind of compromise that's effective. so now they're saying it's inevitable. they're going to try to blame the president. it's a kind of domestic version of the benghazi strategy. let's just see if we can blame somebody with no proof at all and see if the american people will buy it and they won't. >> karen, just going back briefly to the great ted nugent. it's worth recalling this is a man who was investigated by the secret service for things that he said publicly about the president and now this representative decides to bring this individual with him to the state of the union. >> and this is also a man who has the lyrics shall we remember, wang, dang, sweet pootang. i don't know if this is the most appropriate guest to bring to the state of the union. i also think bringing someone like ted nugent, who as you

point out is not only outrageous but actually threatened the president to the point that the secret service had to take that threat seriously, i mean, that shows the ongoing lack of respect for this president. it shows a lack of respect for the importance of the state of the union. we have seen it time and time and time again. every single time the president has gone to the chamber for his institutional responsibility to speak to members of congress, they take it as a joke. they call him a liar. there's some kind of shenanigan that goes on. no doubt with mr. wang dang sweet pootang we're going to hear something funny tomorrow. >> professor shrum, are you surprised at what this man is doing, bringing ted nugent? >> i'm not surprised at all. there are a whole group of these guys who believe, for example, you should be able to carry concealed weapons anywhere in the country or unconcealed weapons. this is a real problem for the republican party. they don't know how to deal with it. it's across the whole range of issues, and as i have said before, you know, bobby jindal, the governor of louisiana, may say it's time for us to stop being the stupid party, they

can't stop being the stupid party if they keep doing dumb things and bringing ted nugent is really dumb. >> karen finney and bob shrum, who we should mention is also a columnist for the daily beast, thank you, both. >> thank you. it's traditional that the president includes a moment where he says the state of our union is, and you can take a look at my response. we want to know how you yourselves would finish that sentence. please do take a photo and submit it to us at facebook.com/msnbc or share it with us on twitter #sotuis. next, the shock heard around the world. stay with us. i remember the day my doctor said i had diabetes.

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700 years to abdicate as head of the catholic church. nbc joins us live from rome. we know that the pope's doctor had advised him against taking any more transatlantic trips. but is there any specific illness or condition that may have led the pope to make this announcement just apart from his age? >> reporter: well, martin, there was a lot of speculation, of course, about what was really behind this decision, and a spokesperson this morning during a press conference he called after he said he didn't even know about his abdication, he just called this press conference and said, look, the pope is not ill or he doesn't have any particular illness and there's nothing behind his decision apart from what he said, which is he's really too tired to carry on with the duties as a pontiff and as an

85-year-old man, any 85-year-old man will find it harsh to go through a schedule like the one the pope has to go through during his pontiff cat. if you think about the number of trips he's taking, the neck one was going to be brazil, so transatlantic flight. then it would be difficult for any man his age, let alone a man who has an extremely busy schedule and, of course, a lot of responsibilities like the pope. so the official line from the vatican is that he's not particularly ill or he doesn't have any particular illness apart from being very, very tired, 85-year-old man who just can't take it anymore. >> nbc's claudio lavanga, thank you, sir. stay with us. the day's "top lines" are coming up. [ male announcer ] this is sheldon, whose long dy setting up the news starts with arthritis pain and a choice. take tylenol or take aleve,

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from the state of our union to the fate of the church. here are today's "top lines." it's a manic monday. >> are you going to support him for defense secretary? >> senator hagel, i think you know that no one in this room cares for deeply about the safety and security of israel than i do. >> that is a lie. >> i have very grave concerns. >> joe biden said no confirmation without information. >> someone should give senator graham a snickers bar and tell him to go sit in the corner. >> no confirmation without information. >> unless he has sugar problems and his sugar is low, i don't think a snickers bar is going to help him. >> are my nighs e defing see? >> pope benedict xvi is doing what no pope has done in 719 years. >> resigning. >> we would have rather had birth control. >> would you look at the ski questions ter if it happens. >> i think it is inevitable. >> it's up to the president really to act now. >> president is now cater walling about the sequester. so are many republicans. >> there's no reason that middle

class families and businesses should suffer just because washington couldn't come together. >> a taxation system that's progressive is beneficial to everyone. that system benefits the very rich. it hammers the poor. >> this is not a complicated concept. >> the debt ceiling crisis is brought on by its own country. >> ka zik stan is kiflized. women can now travel on the inside of the bus. >> we have a girl on the show. >> this is beginning to feel like one of darrell issa's committees. >> i think tupac's lyrics were nor insightful. >> it's like lipstick on a pig. >> let's get right to our panel now. i'm joined by steve kornacki, my colleague, ven vogel is the chief investigative reporter at politico and the great goldie taylor is an msnbc contributor. welcome to all of you. steve, i want to talk about this piece in "the new republic." it's called why the gop is and

will continue to be the party of white people. and it provides real historical context. i know you have seen it, too. how does a party which has traditionally at least over the last four years showns indifference, often times hostility towards minorities, suddenly change itself. >> i don't see the path. i couldn't sit here right now and tell you if they do this, if they nominate this person and if they change this policy, problem solved, but there is a huge problem here. the 2012 elections pointed to it. the republican coalition as it exists right now is only going to continue to shrink unless they can make inroads with this sort of rising majority that president obama tapped into last year. the one cautionary note i would throw into all this is rick pearlsteen who wrote about the '60s and '70s, nixon, goldwater, the rise of the right, he had a piece last week where he talked about we have prematurely talked about the sort of demographic extinction of the republican party before. we did that specifically when lyndon johnson won re-election over goldwater in '64 and we were saying it was the demise of

the rural voter. this country was -- the rural vote was sort of disappearing. this urbanization was going to make this inevitable, democratic majority. what ended up happening was suburbanites turned on the democrats and we got richard nixon. we can prematurely declare these things sometimes. a cautionary note. >> goldie, the piece says today's gop is taking its cues from john calhoun and his belief in nullification. the idea that states can ignore federal law. he writes it's not a coincidence that the resurgence of nullification is happening while our first african-american president is in office. how du the gop reach out to a broader demographic when we see how it's treated this nation's first black president? >> that is the grand irony but the truth of the matter is they're not only hearkening back to calhoun, but they're playing the script of kevin phillips who was the chief architect of the

southern strategy. this was the chaining together of those southern confederate states, those 11 states, with what was happening out west and up through the midwest, and he said at the time we can frankly do without manhattan. we can do without new york. we can do without chicago. we can do without all these major city that is were largely black and brown. the republican party today is still playing on that script. as we know with the demographic shifts, that's a losing proposition if you stay with it for so long. what they've done is instead, they have recruited some very able candidates, ted cruz, marco rubio, people of color who can carry the gop banner who are certainly absolute conservatives, but the issue is it is not who carries the banner. it's what that flag stands for. and unless and until the republican party does some real work, real hard look at its policy and just how, you know,

the animosity they have had through black and brown communities, until they do that work i don't see a pathway back. >> in another article roger says this about the president. i'm quoting him. he's too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. i'm now going to quote the third sentence, the third sentence of the president's inaugural address last month. what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin, nor the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. ken, didn't the election night teach republicans not to listen to what fox news is saying? >> well, fox news incidentally is going through some of the same soul searching and sort of reimagining of itself as the republican party, and that's no coincidence. fox news obviously has come to be very helpful for republicans and in some ways to echo back some of their talking points, and in this story, in this interview that the new republic did with roger, he talks about the need to appeal towards

hispanics in particular. there's a fox news website that's devoted to the latino audience and they're talking about potentially doing some streaming video. so this is not insignificant. i don't think we can just brush aside either what fox news is doing or what the republican party is doing. it's going to be a painful process for them to do some of the real sort of repositioning that goldie is talking about they're needing to do to be competitive. i'm talking both about the republican party and to a lesser extent fox news. there are forces within both that don't want to see a whole lot of change and they are going to stamp their feet loudly if they see a significant redirection. but at least in the case of the republican party it seems as if there is a significant internal push for that and a belief that that is what is necessary in order to be competitive going forward into 2014 and 2016. >> goldie, let me play you something a republican

strategist said on the sunday talk shows about why the gop's future is actually quite bright, and as you just said it in a word, rubio. take a listen. >> marco rubio does seem to be rising to the top of the heap right now. >> yeah. look, he's everything we need and more. he's modern. he knows who tupac is. >> okay, goldie. if you say you listen to tupac, you understand black people, is that right? >> that's just a very, very challenging statement to make. marco rubio certainly is a good politician and he's a very, very good conservative. he stands right on all of the issues where it is necessary. he meets and exceeds the so-called litmus test, but to say that marco rubio on his own can bring hispanics back into the republican party is frankly just a misnomer. if you look at elections across the country where we had white versus nonwhite candidates, white candidates were drawing just as high of numbers as hispanic and black voters.

so i don't believe that the race of the candidate alone is enough of a lure. maybe it opens the conversation, but if the messages are wrong, certainly the conversation ends very quickly and we've seen that with an ausm lot of candidates who have carried the republican banner who have come from diverse communities. >> as we think, steve, about someone like marco rubio, marco rubio voted against raising the debt ceiling. marco rubio supported governor rick scott's voter suppression tactics in florida. yes, he's hispanic but what about the content of his policies? >> what goldie is saying is true. race after race there, was ted cruz in texas, brian sandoval, where the republicans have nominated hispanic candidates, they have not suddenly seen in these races a surge in support among hispanic voters. they are performing about the same as any other republican candidate would. the opportunity and the risk for republicans really lies i think among hispanic voters. they have not seriously competed for the african-american vote at the national level since before

1964. they got wiped out. they never again nominated an anti-civil rights candidate, but their relationship with black voters was basically poisoned in 1964. the risk is over the last few years, prefecture with rejeespeg immigration, they have alienated latino voters. >> steve kornacki, ken vogel, and goldie taylor, thank you all so much. neck, the president's post-state of the union tour. he's on the road. stay with us. >> all of this stuff is just surface stuff. it's like lipstick on a pig. i mean, the bottom line is the republicans have a core values problem, not a who -- >> i don't think -- [ bells jingle ]

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she's still trying to recapture her powers of speech after being shot in the head. but former representative gabby giffords is quickly becoming one of the nation's strongest voices for common sense gun safety. in an interview this weekend with "the new york times," giffords made it clear her role is only going to get bigger as she and her husband mark kelly focus their efforts on defeating pro-gun candidates in next year's elections. meanwhile, the daily toll of gun violence continues to mount. just over the weekend, four

people were shot on bourbon street in new orleans while celebrating the countdown to mardi gras. police in san jose, california, responded to a 911 call sunday afternoon and found the body of a man who had been fatally wounded. and then just this morning three people were killed during a shootout in the lobby of a courthouse in wilmington, delaware. let's bring in daniel hernandez, the former gabby giffords intern and author of "they call me a hero" which tells the story of how he helped save the former congresswoman's life. we're also joined by representative diana deget, democrat of colorado. gabby giffords and her husband mark kelly are starring in a new ad that's out today. take a listen to this. >> take it from me, congress must act. let's get this done. >> now, that's the first ad from

miss giffords group and it's going to air in speaker john boehner's district among others and in kentucky, the state of senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. if you will excuse the pun, daniel, this is a targeted campaign, isn't it? >> it is. and i think it's so great to see the congresswoman using her own words. as we saw two weeks ago with the senate hearing, it's so difficult for her to be able to speak but her voice is a really important one. and her message to the members of congress and to the senators is we need you to be brave and courageous because americans are counting on you. now we turn on the heat with this new ad. >> daniel, many of us felt that when the congresswoman appeared on her final day in the house, that it might provoke some kind of change, and it didn't. so why is this different? >> you know, as a young elected official i was so distraught with what happened at newtown. i'm a school board member and having that happen to the most vulnerable people i think was the big wake-up call.

it wasn't just something that could happen to a member of congress. it wasn't -- it could happen to any of us. it could happen to our children. i'm hoping along with congresswoman giffords i believe that this will hopefully be the sea change. that this moment will be our last line. because we cannot continue to do nothing because as we've seen, every time we do nothing, more americans continue to die. 34 americans die each and every single day because of gun violence. those people you mentioned are the people that are getting attention. those that are being killed because they are just standing for a bus, waiting to get on the bus, are getting killed. so we need to be really careful when we're moving forward that we're changing these common sense gun laws not to stop evil from happening but it make it harder for those who want to hurt our children and to hurt people in this society from being able to do it quickly. >> absolutely. congresswoman, we understand that you and one of your colleagues have donated extra tickets to tomorrow's state of the union address to the mother and uncle of a.j., an

18-year-old young man who was gunned down at the shootings in aurora last summer. we've also just heard that another of your esteemed colleagues, representative steve stockman of texas, has invited none other than ted nugent to be his guest at the speech tomorrow. how do you feel about that? >> well, each member of congress gets a ticket for their spouse or other honored guest and i can't think of anybody i would rather honor than the relatives of those who were so horribly shot down in aurora, in columbine and newtown and so on. i can't imagine what my colleague was thinking to invite somebody who is an avid nra advocate. that's not what this is about. we're talking about these people whose families have been shattered by gun violence, and i don't think it's particularly smart move frankly on the part of congressman stockman. >> and let's not forget that ted nugent actually said that he

wanted the president to suck on his gun. that's what he actually said. >> i mean, you know, it's really -- i don't even really want to give it the benefit of a comment. it's ridiculous. instead, what i'd like to talk about was what daniel was talking about, what my friend gabby is talking about. now is the time in this country to have common sense gun safety measures, and i have been working on these issues for 20 years now, and i will agree, there was something that really changed in the hearts of america after those 20 little first graders and teachers were killed, and, you know, my daughter -- i live right outside the aurora theater. my daughter had friends who were in the next theater. so it hits all of us really close to home. and it's as daniel said, you're never going to be able to stop somebody who is deranged or mentally ill from getting a gun, but you sure can make sure that they don't have a semiautomatic weapon that has a 30 or a

100-round ammunition magazine that can kill so many people in such a short time. >> daniel, you have heard the president lay out some of his proposals. and it seems as though over recent weeks it's really getting down to something like background checks and things like high capacity magazines, many politicians are suggesting that simply wouldn't get through the house. but from your perspective, is that where we need to go with these issues? >> you know, we have to start somewhere, and while we might not be able to get everything that we know will help prevent people from killing innocents, we know that we need to start somewhere. so if we need to start and it's the background checks, when you look at the polling done by mayors against illegal guns, 78% of all members of the nra that were polled by frank luntz, a republican pollster, agree this is something we need to do. other polling has shown the vast majority of americans are in favor of this. while it may not be what we wanted to be done as a whole,

let's start with background checks and then once we do background checks then let's come back and see what is the effect of backgrounds checks -- >> can i just say -- >> congresswoman, please. >> can i add, daniel, i want to give you some hope. i think we can pass much more than just background checks. i think we can pass legislation banning the assault magazines. i think we can do some things with mental health. i think we can close the gun show loophole. i think that there's a lot we can do, and i think it would go a long way. efforts to target republicans in key districts like gabby and her husband mark are doing are fantastic because really the republicans need to know it's just not a democratic issue. it's for all of us to think about. >> can i ask you, briefly, to respond to this question. what do you hope the president will say in his state of the union address tomorrow as it relates to gun safety? >> well, i hope the president will reiterate what he has said,

which is that america has the duty to make sure that we protect our children and that we pass comprehensive gun safety legislation, and i hope he calls on congress to do that with all due speed. >> daniel? >> you know, i agree with the congresswoman. she hit the nail right on the head. we need the president to just say what he's already said. when he started that task force and tasked the vice president with leading it up and with the proposals they came up, they line up with the thompson commission but let's make sure we don't let this be the end. we need to have this be the start of us applying the pressure on those members of congress and as we head into 2014, we're going to remember every time someone votes against common sense gun safety legislation. we have new groups like americans for responsible solution that will remind the people who are the voters in that district your member has voted against the safety of your children and the people that live in this district. >> daniel hernandez and representative diana degette,

thank you so much. >> thank you. >> and we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] how do you make america's favorite recipes? just begin with america's favorite soups. bring out chicken broccoli alfredo. or best-ever meatloaf. go to campbellskitchen.com for recipes, plus a valuable coupon. campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do.

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